


Storm

by Ekatarinabeisel76



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: 100_prompts, Homesickness, Hurt Danny "Danno" Williams, Ice Skating, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ekatarinabeisel76/pseuds/Ekatarinabeisel76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For #015 Storm. Danny is homesick, and goes to the Ice Palace. He does 't expect for Chin to be there, or to throw out his knee and ankle on a doule sow-cow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storm

#015 Storm

Danny misses the cold November rain that washed the streets of Jersey City and laid the foundation for the sheets of ice that carved slick shoots in December. He misses playing scrambling all over the ice on the pond behind his house as a kid, just getting used to the heavy weight of skates. He misses the feel of winning the game for the Jersey City club team, and later, after too many on-ice fights and heated exchanges between his mother and refs for it to have been a possibility, being the captain of his high school team. 

But Hawaii is a long way from New Jersey, and no one really wants to ice skate during summer vacation on a tropical island. Thousands of people don't flock to the islands every year to feel the chill of sub-zero temperatures and the glide of freshly sharpened blades on a sheet of ice just pressed smooth by the zamboni. Although that’s exactly what Danny’s idea of a vacation is - carving up fresh ice, spraying the walls with a fine powder of crystallized ice with every stop, and maybe checking out the figure skaters.

His nickname was blizzard, back when he’d been able to play pick up with people that really knew who to skate and check. He’d earned based on his habit of spraying ice onto his opponent’s legs before checking them, and his incredible speed. His alternative name was princess, due to the fact that he also figure skated. He managed to pass it off as a constraint of his mother’s making, and later an exercise in precision skating, but the truth was that Danny enjoyed throwing sow-cows and axel jumps and doubles. It took him to his happy place.

The Ice Palace is as close as he can get to his happy place now though, so he makes do. It really is a nice facility, and it sports a sort of fan-club atmosphere. It’s where Danny can be found after a particularly arduous case, or a fight with Rachel, and on every single day off that he doesn’t have Grace. It just so happens that Danny is there on a Tuesday in August when Chin walks in and leans against the boards separating the rink from the viewing area.

Danny doesn’t notice that someone he knows is in the crowd coming in to escape the heat until he looks up from a Mohawk turn and sees Chin staring at him. For a terrifying second he is faced with choosing between ignoring him and possible preserving his dignity, and acknowledging Chin and possibly preserving his friendship. Chin takes the choice of his friendship or his dignity out of his hands when he throws his head back in a very distinct nod.

And of course Chin isn’t smiling, and his eyes are unreadable, because this is Chin he’s dealing with and you can never tell what Chin wants until he wants you to know. So Danny resigns himself to being permanently in the man’s debt as he skates over to where he stands behind the boards.

He starts the conversation directly, not wasting time with courtesies. Danny supposes that makes sense, since their lives were in each other's hands on any given day. Still, he was really hoping for some time to come up with an explanation.

“Your file mentioned hockey, but I really had to dig for that Nationals medal in men’s singles.” Chin says. If Danny hadn’t been absolutely shocked by the revelation that Chin had both checked his personal file and investigated his youth records, he might have caught the teasing note in Chin’s voice sooner. Instead, he turns crimson and casts his face from a tough mold.

“I figured your knee wouldn’t let you do that stuff.” Chin mused questioningly. Danny wondered if it was the first time he had heard Chin be so unspecific.

“It actually makes it feel a lot better - low friction exercise, ya’ know?” Danny supplies.

“Yeah, but those jumps are high impact. Your landing was a little shaky on that flip thing you did; are you sure you didn’t twist it?”

Again, Danny was surprised to hear Chin so obviously out of his element that his syntax changed. However, now that he thought about, his knee had protested a bit after the ‘flip thing’, and the protests had gotten louder as he skated over to Chin, but Danny had put that down to his ego preparing to deflate and nervous twinges. Besides, he was pretty sure that he had sprained his ankle after an over-enthusiastic double very early into his skate session.

“I guess so.” he responded, not sure if he was really supposed to respond.

“Why don’t you come out to the locker room and I’ll look at it.” It wasn't a question, Danny knew that much just from Chin’s eyes and tone, but the hand surging out like a rolling wave to grasp his wrist sealed it.

Sure enough, his first step off the ice and onto the rubber mat flooring of the rink exit was shaky. He caught Chin’s gaze sliding his way, and the flash of a knowing smirk that quickly dissolved into a thin line of concern. They made it to the alcove surrounding the entrance to the locker room before Danny went down like a sack of potatoes. The taller man kept him up though, and pulled his arm over his shoulder in a successful attempt to force the detective to place his weight on him.

Chin gently deposited Danny onto the nearest bench and knelt in front of him. He immediately set about unlacing Danny’s left skate with nimble fingers, and when he pulled the skate off his eyes visibly darkened with intense disappointment. His ankle had swollen well beyond the confines of the skate, and the flesh was burgeoning through the thick socks that Danny kept in his skate bag.

“How did you not know that this was sprained?” Cin demanded, pinning the detective with a glare that could rival any Mrs. Williams had ever summoned up to convey intense displeasure.

“I have no defense.” Danny answered. 

Chin studied the injury and probed at the swollen flesh with gently fingers before he pulled back and looked up at Danny.

“I’m going to have to wrap and ice them both. Hang tight here while I go get some ice and ace wrap.” Chin ordered.

Danny obeyed and waited in awkward, embarrassed silence for Chin to return and scold him for his reckless workout ethic. When the Lieutenant did eventually burst through the double doors separating the men’s locker room from the rest of the rink., he looked particularly displeased.

His lips were clasped together tightly into a thin line. His eyes burned with a spark of something unpleasant, and his eyebrows were furrowed. Without a word, Chin returned to his kneeling position in front of Danny’s swollen knee and ankle, and dropped the ice packs into Danny’s lap.

“The girl at the front desk seemed disappointed to find out that you were injured.” Chin said in an unattached tone.

“Which one?” Danny asked, failing to recall the name and face of today’s clerk.

“The size four brunette with grey eyes.” Chin answered sharply.

Danny was surprised by the edge in Chin’s voice, but he put it down to being annoyed at him for injuring himself yet again. He let it go, and continued to watch the dark-haired man wrap his ankle. He was slightly comforted when Chin’s fingers began to softly massage his injuries, but his relief didn’t last long. Danny was almost adrift in the ebbing tide of his pain when Chin suddenly stopped his ministrations and demanded, “Are you seeing her?”

Once again, the blonde was taken aback. The question wad as sudden and unexpected as a blizzard in July, and he had never considered the possibility of hooking up with Susie-at-the-front-desk, much less dating her, and then there was the small detail that he had never thought that Chin had any interest in his love life. The taller man’s eyes were pointed, and his voice was hard and to the point, but of all the things that Danny could have noticed first, it was that Chin’s fingers had stopped moving on his ankle.

“No man.” The blonde answered. Chin appeared relieved for a moment, until Danny’s need to explain kicked in and he hastily added, “I don’t date.” In an instant, all of the relief and spark in the other man’s face drained. To the cadence of his flipping stomach and the raucous uproar of the butterflies contained within it, Danny took a chance.

“I have someone in mind.” He said softly.

Slowly, unsurely, Chin raised his gaze to level it with Danny’s soft, stormy, blue eyes. When he found sincerity and affection, his fingers returned to their blissful rhythm against the tender flesh of Danny’s ankle and probed a path upwards to his equally swollen knee. And in the space between them, along the invisible line between their eyes, they had an entire conversation in utter silence.

“You sure?” Chin asked. “Our lives aren’t exactly a cakewalk.”

Danny laughed. “If you think you can be even half as bad as Rachel then you severely overestimate your skill at making people miserable.”

Chin responded with his own laugh, and by rising to his feet and extending his hand out to Danny. The shorter man accepted his down-turned palm, and allowed himself to be lead out of the Ice Palace and into the parking lot, where Chin’s motorcycle was waiting.

Then, just as they reached the bike and Danny was expecting to be released from Chin’s vice-like grip on his arm, Chin asked, “What are the chances that I get to see you in those tights you figure skaters wear?”


End file.
